Friday, October 12, 2018

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Michael Harris writes that we shouldn't expect politicians to lead the way toward the action we need to combat climate change. Katie Dangerfield reports
on new research showing that the economic effects of carbon pricing are
modest, while ignoring climate change will have massive costs. But
Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood examines
how the USCMA figures to lock in a fossil-fuel economy while failing to
pay even lip service to our most fundamental challenge.

- Amanda Agan and Michael Makowsky study the social effects of a higher minimum wage, including a decrease in criminal recidivism.

- Finally, Naomi Klein discusses
Donald Trump's standing as the U.S.' most glaring example of dynastic
privilege being used to suppress the hopes of anybody who doesn't share
the same fortune. And Christo Aivalis comments on the ongoing relevance of Mouseland as a metaphor for Canadian politics:

The story of Mouseland—which can be seen here in animated form—described
a society where mice formed the majority of the population, and yet
consistently elected governments comprised of cats. Those cats—be they
white cats or black cats or spotted cats—passed laws that benefitted
them, often to the detriment of the mice majority.

The story turns for Douglas when a little mouse comes along with a
bold idea, which is that instead of electing a government of cats, they
should choose their leadership from amongst themselves. Of course, that
little mouse was branded a dangerous subversive and was locked up, but
as Douglas says, “you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can’t lock up
an idea.”

The allegory is clearly meant to apply to Canadian society, and
Douglas makes that explicit: “Now if you think it strange that mice
should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history
of Canada…and maybe you’ll see that they weren’t any stupider than we
are.” For him, the story of Canadian politics was one where Liberal and
Conservative cats ruled the roost while the masses of mice languished in
poverty, precarity, and inequality. But when pioneering mice like J.S.
Woodsworth stepped up to form the Labour Party and eventually the
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, they offered a new path forward.
...
Mouseland is clearly a populist narrative. In our own times, many
people, especially among the centrist elite, have equated populism with
Trumpian far-right politics. Certainly, the right has been successful at
tapping into popular discontent with the status quo, and has been able
to portray wealthy leaders like Trump and Ford as regular joes. But as I’ve noted in other venues,
populism is an essential component to any left wing programme which
sincerely seeks to represent the masses of working-class people.
Mouseland is just the sort of fable that sparks a populist understanding
of politics, where the 99% of mice stop deferring to the feline elite,
and start doing politics differently. Where politicians who share their
life experience are elected to represent them, and in turn can pass good
laws—that is—laws that are good for mice.

One of the Canadian left’s key failings over the past couple decades
has been a belief that we have to move beyond class conflict as a
vehicle for social, political, and economic change; that regular
Canadians don’t see themselves as mice anymore, or simply see themselves
as cats-in-waiting. Some of this may well be true, but the reality is
that class conflict isn’t going anywhere, and the social and economic
elite understand this best of all. The left in Canada needs to centre
politics of the many over the few, even if that makes enemies among the
people unlikely to support them in the first place. Mouseland may well
just be a fable, but it is nonetheless instructive, and can be used in
part to illustrate a class consciousness among the masses of people in
this country, matching that class solidarity which has never dissipated
among the wealthy and well-connected.